Tag Archives: humor

This Atonement Day and Beyond

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Yom Kippur started Friday at sundown.  We have our services at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.  It is a free service — no one is turned away.  Keeping an open door policy is part of who were are as a community because the synagogue was started nearly 40 years ago by gay Jews who were not welcomed anywhere as gays, as Jews or as gay Jews.  Now our synagogue welcomes people of all sexual orientation (including straight) and all gender orientations (I only know the two main ones, but I am told that there are as many points on that spectrum as, let’s say, colors in the rainbow).  Almost 4,000 people attended Kol Nidre on Friday night.

The senior rabbi is a woman in her late forties but she looks like a pre-pubescent, book-ish boy.  She is a thoughtful and insightful speaker.  And, she does have moments of levity, as when she announced that she would like to be known now as “Lady Syna-Gaga“.  Ok, there is a reason why our synagogue can never really go mainstream.

We ended around 10pm last night and started up again this morning.

This morning, we all went to the children’s service which had a fair amount of substance.  The rabbis talked about seeking forgiveness, saying, “I’m sorry,” etc., and otherwise tried to distill the elements of the Holy Day without dumbing it down too much.

Then we came home and I fixed our son a sandwich for lunch.  He is 8 years old, so he does not fast but we do put techno-toys away for the day.

I was about to sit down at the table to keep him company while he ate, but he said, “E-Mom, I would like to eat alone so I can think about all of the things I need to say sorry for and all the things I need to do better.”

Ok, my son is wonderful and all, but this is out of hand.  Reflexively, I asked, “Really?”

Right after blurting that out, I thought “I need work on not being so cynical and more trusting of my son’s motives, because we were at this substantive kids’ service and maybe something spoke to him —-”

My thoughts were interrupted by my son — ever the honest little boy, “Nah, I just want to play with the iTouch and I didn’t want you to see.”

At least he is honest.

We returned to synagogue for the late afternoon service through to the end of Ne’ila, the last service of Yom Kippur.  After services were over, as we poured into the street to find our ways home, two attendees who were, just minutes before, wrapped in prayer shawls, stole cabs from us. I started screaming at one in the cab that was then stopped for the light, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”

Then, I realized that my son was watching me and I thought to myself, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”  So, I stopped.

We hailed another cab and we went home, a tired but happy family.

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How desperate am I?

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How desperate?

I clicked onto comedycentral@email.comedycentral.com and actually thought about making a video and trying to get “discovered”.  Then I could leave the practice of law and, yet, not disappoint my mother (may she rest in peace).

Then I realized that it was just a gimmick (su-u-u-u-u-r-r-pri-i-i-ise!!!) to watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Thank G-d I have my day job still.

But still I am thinking about what kind of correspondent I would be. Senior Middle-Aged White Jewish Woman With Impulse Control Issues Correspondent?

What would I talk about?  I think people would be interested in some lesser known Jewish cultural and religious customs.  In fact, it would make even the crazy, anti-muslims bigots in the country start thinking that Islam is mainstream.

I thought of a few topics:

What to wear on Tu B’Shevat?  That’s Jewish Arbor Day.  One has to be careful not to have clashing shades of green.

Digestion. Why is it a cultural imperative to wait one hour after lunch before going back in the pool or the ocean? Even highly educated people still hold to this bubbemeisa (Yiddish equivalent of “old wives’ tale”).  Why?  Because — G-d forbid — a freak accident occurred and someone who didn’t wait the one hour got a cramp in the water and drowned, then all of the guilt that has amassed since being thrown out of the Garden of Eden (we have original guilt, not original sin) will come crashing on your head.  So, doctors of all things know better than to stare down history and Jewish karma (forgive the mixing of metaphors).

Maturity. How is it possible to be a man under Jewish law and still have to ask your mother’s permission to have a play date after school?  Answer: boys are born as gods, grow up to be princes and then graduate to manhood (Bar Mitzvah), all by the time they are 13.  No wonder they have such problems as they age.  They peak too early.

Circumcision.  Do you know what people do with the foreskin afterwards?  A little known fact — the foreskin is buried under a sapling or small tree (but not small like a bonsai tree) and when the boy is ready to get married, the branches are cut from the tree to make the wedding canopy (chupah).  We know firsthand, because my father-in-law made us store it in the freezer for months until he had a chance to go to the country house and bury it.  Needless to say, there was nothing ELSE in the freezer and we got rid of the refrigerator as soon as possible.  The echo of generations of screaming babies in our refrigerator could be the subject of a made-for-TV movie.

So it is a vicious cycle:  moyel (ritual circumciser) cuts boy, boy grows up and cuts tree, tree beats scissors, scissors are used to cut the next boy’s foreskin . . . and so on. . . and so on.

Ok, I have to stop now.  When I start making rock, paper, scissors ooky, I know I have gone, at warp speed, off the reservation, on my way to hell.  Anyone need a ride?

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Elmo Goes To Work

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Ever wonder how Elmo gets to work?

Well, here he is on his way to Sesame Street.

Hey, Elmo, “can you tell me how you get — how you get — to Sesame Stree-ee-tt??”

Wait, Elmo, you’ve stopped on the corner of 50th Street and 7th Avenue.  I know for sure — for sure — that this is most definitely NOT Sesame Street.

Funny, his voice sounded awfully much like a lawyer I used to know. . . .

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A gift from my sister

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SOB (sister of blogger) and my brother-in-law spent a few days in Vienna, goose-shtepping with Wagner.

My gift from the heart of virulent anti-semitism is this priceless picture.  A gift that keeps on giving.

You can’t make this up.

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Our day today

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POB (partner of blogger) had a great idea this morning — go to Governor’s Island for a picnic.  Governor’s Island is a decommissioned military base island in New York harbor (right next to Ellis Island and Liberty Island) that has been turned into a park and fairground.  It is an easy subway ride followed by a ferry ride.  Ok, “easy” refers only to the directness of the route.  When on the subway or in line for the ferry, a person is subject to the sea of surrounding humanity and their insipid conversations.  (For the record, our (i.e., this blogger community) conversations are never insipid — too revealing? Maybe. But insipid? Never.)

First, there was a more-unsteady-than-elderly lady for whom POB gave up her seat.  (I was already standing.) POB asked if she wanted a seat and the woman turned to her friend and said, in a cartoonishly nasal voice, “Oh, see!! A seat opened up!!”  Poof, like, magic.  Really?  No, because a well-mannered person got up (in contradistinction to the mopes and slouches around us).  Her friend started to talk about food processing in a loud, screeching voice.

What the woman said was important and true — that if you saw how fast food is made, you would never eat it again and that most processing is bad for humans in both nutrition and the environment — but did we need to hear it in outrageous volume with a holier-than-thou tone at 11am on a holiday weekend?  And, just across the aisle, a scary-looking, tattooed dad with a beer gut (who was playing with his child by pretending to strangle him — really) was giving the child huge helpings of Pepperidge Farm flavor-blasted gold fish (hmmm, salt, chemically reconstructed “cheese” and polysorbate 60, anyone?).  Our son loves them, too, and we know we are going to a special place in hell for parents who let their kids eat this junk.  None of the kale or broccoli or grass-fed beef that our son eats will save us from this punishment.

And why DO men need to sit so wide that they take up nearly two seats?  I note that the smaller the shoe size of the man, the wider he sits.  Is this some psychological melodrama playing out?

Fast-forward to the line waiting to get back on the ferry to Manhattan.  A group of women and one man was behind us.  The man, who was overweight, and a bitchy effete garden gnome, was commenting to women passersby, “hey, do you think you could have tighter clothing?” or “do you think you could be any fatter?”  All I wanted to say to him was, “come out of the closet and stop being bitter with baggage”.  But I didn’t.  I could take him down in a minute.  The women, however, would lay me out.  One of the women had a son who was going to grow up to be the bully of his neighborhood.  He dropped a juice carton on the street and someone picked it up and handed it to her and said, “I think your child dropped this.”  I thought it was an elegant way to force the woman to deal with the litter.  She got all huffy, with heavy hip and neck action, saying to her friends, “the baby drops this and he gives it to me?” Ok, who else?  She is his mother for G-d’s sakes.  And the baby?  BABY?  Try 6 years-old, going on 12.  And mean.

Too much humanity.  I wanted to take a private water taxi followed by a cab.  I couldn’t handle any more.  But we did continue on the public transportation route.  On the subway, three 20-somethings were talking and POB and I were transfixed by the car wrecks that were their conversations and their outfits.  One was falling out of her skimpy outfit and had used eyebrow pencil to highlight her auburn eyebrows into a Groucho Marx effect.  I think she thought I was admiring her instead of not being able to take my eyes off this mobile crashing unit, so when she got off, she shimmied at me and smiled.  I was sooooooo grossed out I could barely breathe.

I took to my bed for a nap.  Oh, I forgot, once you get to Governor’s Island, it is perfectly lovely.

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Mother to a boy

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Our 8 year-old boy is still very cuddly, but we know it won’t last for long.  Sometimes, when we are watching cartoons on a weekend morning, he says, “E-Mom!! Stop smothering me!!”

I believe it is my divine right of motherhood to be the quintessential overbearing Jewish mother.   I realize now that my mother, and her mother before her, were just trying to stuff a lifetime worth of love and concern into the few years they actually had control over their children’s lives.  And because, when I look at my child, all I want to do (when I don’t want to throttle him) is hug him and tell him how adorable he is and how much I love him.

So, today, when he said those awful words (“stop smothering me!!”) during our cartoon marathon, I reminded him of my divine right to smother and added, “you can’t spell smother without M-O-T-H-E-R!!”

With my new-found appreciation for the cartoon, “Phineas and Ferb” (today they went on a boat for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour . . . .), I started imitating the show’s evil doctor, Heinz Doofenschmirtz, who invents “-inators” to do evil things to the entire tri-state area (no joke), and proclaimed myself, the “SMOTHER-inator”.

Yes, yes, yes, I know.  Any sane person would not admit to this.

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Pre-High Holy Days Mayhem

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So, because POB (partner of blogger) reminds me that in “good homes” the carpets and the furniture are cleaned annually, and the windows are cleaned twice, before Passover and before Rosh Ha-Shanah, we have been in a cleaning frenzy.  Also the mice episodes gave the cleaning rituals a bit more fevered pitch this year.  Also the bed bug scare in New York had us getting new mattresses, etc.   In short, we are doing what we can to raise the retail sales numbers nationally.  Now, that is patriotism.

Our housekeeper comes on Fridays.  Our housekeeper is a wonderful and robust woman in her 60s who comes from Poland and, as she says, “knows hard vork”.   But since she is in her 60s we try to get others to the hard vork.  In this case, POB and I wanted to lay the cleaned rug down in the dining room (we had already done the heavy lifting in the living room).  This endeavor also involved cutting the mat underneath so that the rug laid properly. 

Here are the many dramas that came into play:  Our housekeeper said, “[Blogger], you are educated; I know hard vork.  Step avay from the mat and I vill cut!”  Ok, POB and I were raised to respect our elders and never to let someone older do work we could do ourselves.  We are also the “employers”, adding another level.  Also, POB is strong like you-can’t-imagine strong. 

So we are all on the floor playing out our social, economic and cultural dynamics.  The window cleaner walks in (we had left the door open for him after the doorman announced him) and sees three woman on the floor with scissors and box cutters arguing over who is cutting the mat that goes under the rug.  He asks, “where do I start?”  Really?  Really?  Is this a usual scene for the window cleaner?

We all stop.  I agree to cede the fight to POB and our housekeeper in order to get the window cleaner guy started as long as I get to move the dining room table.  Pause.  I seeing nodding and I retreat.  A little victory of sorts.

Of course, I should have known that even though I was allowed to move the dining room table, everyone would have an opinion on its precise location.  POB was the most forceful in her opinions.  “A little to the right.”  “Closer to the windows.”  “No, too much.” 

“Are you listening??” 

NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I scream in my head, but all that comes out is “Yes, dear.” 

Back in my head, I am thinking you thought we should get our windows cleaned before a hurricane.  This is not like wearing good underwear in case you are taken to an emergency room.  The hurricane won’t treat us any better.  But then the hurricane passes us and POB is right — again.

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My new morning routine

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I used to watch Bloomberg TV in the mornings so I would know what was happening in the markets, etc., and because the morning shows are too chatty for me. 

My morning routine has been up-ended as of late because my son is still on vacation and barrels into our room in the mornings to watch cartoons.  We settle into “Phineas and Ferb”.  POB (partner of blogger) brings me coffee (how did I get so lucky?) and I cuddle with my little baby-soon-to-be-a-tweener (who will thereafter never let me hug him again, but for now, it is a little bit of heaven).  And I am in a good mood for the rest of the day.  (But I do run very late for work.)

Today, my son slept until after 9am, which is an unprecedented late hour.  I, however, was watching “Phineas and Ferb” since 8:30am because the show just by itself puts me in a good mood.  Cuddling with my son makes it a little bit of heaven, but the cartoon is really funny. 

The references to the “Love Boat” and other things of the 1970s and 80s as well as the comments from the mother (“yes, dear, I have a few minutes before my bladder bursts like a water balloon”) are hilarious.  And the kids are good natured and nothing bad ever happens and there is no real violence, etc. Ok, there is some suspension of reality needed — there is a platypus named Perry who is also a secret agent and his nemesis is Heinz Doofenschmirtz. 

So, forget the Dow Industrial Average and Bloomberg News in the mornings.  I am tuning into my pals Phineas and Ferb.

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Long Island — Heaven on Earth? Or the Other Place?

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My son has visited his grandmother’s graves.  They are on Long Island.  Sometimes, as parents do when they have no answers to children’s questions about love and loss, we say, “Nana and Grandma are watching from Heaven.”   About two or more years ago, I had to tell our son that a family friend — family, really — had died and — well, er, um — gone to Heaven.  “Does that mean he is buried on Long Island?” our son asked.  I responded that while some people believe that Long Island is Heaven on Earth, we in Manhattan think of it as a place to keep and honor the bodies of our dead loved ones, but that Heaven was not a place on Earth and surely not on Long Island.

Fast-forward to this week of vacation in rainy Montauk. Yes, on Long Island.  Heaven on Earth to some (not us, especially in the rain). Today is Day 3 on the road to Utopia.

For a retreat for the rich and even-richer, my experiences in the Hamptons and Montauk today were particularly democratic.  All of us thought we would be around a pool or at the beach.  But the weather is the great equalizer.  We stood cheek by jowl and vied for tickets at the local movie house or a table at the local pizzeria.  You may be a titan of industry when you are in NYC, but here, HERE, in the RAIN, don’t even THINK of trying to take THAT table in the greasy pizzeria.  I did offer a chair to a woman with a particularly large number of diamonds on her finger because the weight of them seemed to make her list to the left in a most unbecoming way.  Tragic deformities of wealth.  Good thing we are not at such risk; we will have good posture.

Julianne Moore was browsing the Montauk bookstore with her husband and daughter.  Of course, her children’s books were on display.  Since she was a lead in the movie, “The Kids Are All Right,” I wanted to kiss POB (partner of blogger) to show her that women of a certain age with children can still feel love and passion, even though she portrayed some of us as insipid, mousy individuals.  Ok, some relationships, gay or straight, are that way.  But, it would be great if a major motion picture about lesbians wasn’t a feel-good movie for straight people.  Am I ranting?  Ok, so I am ranting while staying on some people’s version of Heaven.  Is this the closest I will get to the Pearly Gates?  Oh, boy, am I in deep shit.

I also went to the gym in East Hampton, because the stress of staying in Heaven while it rains was getting to me.  A woman started to talk to me in the locker room.  Apparently, even in Heaven, I have “schmuck” written on my forehead and a magnet for random strangers.  She was telling me that she needed to work out, rather spontaneously, because she was upstairs at Citarella and some woman continually bumped into her in a rude manner and then blamed her.  Apparently, she thought I was staring at her bizarre work-out “costume” (ok, she was right).  I looked around for the Court of Judgment and listened for those trumpets, because since this is Long Island, and therefore, Heaven, there must be a divine court of justice.  Hmmm.  Must be on vacation until Labor Day.  Back just in time to render judgment on me for Rosh Ha-Shanah.  My timing is impeccable.

The other thing I realized is that Long Island cannot be Heaven because I recognized some business people who said they would see me in Hell, and given their business habits, I believed that they, at least, would be THERE.

Gosh, I would love a relaxing beach vacation.  Anyone know where I can find one?

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Poor John

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Poor “John”.

I thought about this as DOB (dad of blogger) excused himself at a restaurant to “go find the John.”  He remembers not to say this in front of my sister, for whom this phrase is like fingernails on a chalkboard, for reasons unknown.  But since SOB (sister of blogger) was not at lunch today, DOB thought to live a little.

While he was gone, I mused over the unfortunate associations made with the name, “John,” over time.  Even Adolf (as in Hitler) is not as maligned, although it is not a really popular name anymore.

From Wikipedia and other sources:

  • John, slang for a person who patronizes prostitutes.
  • John, slang for toilet.
  • Johnny Come Lately, a belatedly enthusiast or supporter who tries to seem as if he were a trailblazer.
  • Jonnycake, a cornmeal flatbread.
  • Johnny Reb, a slang term for Southern Confederates during the American Civil War.
  • John Doe, or John Q. Public, the any man and every man.
  • (Dear) John Letter, a letter from a soldier’s girl back home, dumping him while he is off at war.
  • John, my dear friend’s sneaky, cheap and vituperative ex-husband.

So, John, a common name and one that has its correlatives in many different languages and cultures, has been summarily trashed over time.  John makes even “Herbert” or “Horace” a better naming option.  And that is tragic.  (But Adolf is probably not a good alternative until at least 100 years have passed since the end of World War II.  And not even then.)

So, be kind to the Johns in your life — as long as they are not ex-husbands, flatbreads, confederates, toilets or customers of prostitutes.

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